Websmith Plumbing on Creativity Hacker

Looking For A New Home

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Fri, 20 Jun 2025 12:08:32 +0000

There’s an important part of the system that I’ve yet to embrace: where to host the source code for my projects? In a recent post about Plim I codified the need to post code early and often, but neglected to say where that would be. This is the rumination where I’ll try to answer that question…

Deployment Delayed Due To Injury

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 11:27:57 +0000

Just as I was about to send the new site out into the world, I discovered that it was injured. Now I have to find the problem and fix it before I can launch, but that’s turning out to be trickier than expected.

Resuming After The Detour

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 11:48:38 +0000

It’s only been about a week, but in that short time I’ve had to change the core structure several times. I think, though, that I finally have my toys arranged in a tidy, predictable, and flexible system. This means I can now return to integrating the last major content block before I launch the site: the CaveTV Videos.

But what did I change? And how will those changes support future needs as well as current? Let’s talk about that.

Critical Failure

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Wed, 07 May 2025 07:45:55 +0000

The more tech you allow into your life, the more time you’ll spend fixing tech.

Sigh. Yesterday I discovered that there’s a crucial component in this whiz-bang site management system that I had not considered. How did I discover it? Because it failed. So now progress on all other fronts has to take a back seat while I figure out how to either repair or replace it.

And the tech in question? A tiny Raspberry Pi.

Baby Steps FTW

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Mon, 05 May 2025 11:49:34 +0000

It’s funny how hard it can be to defuse old habits. Historically, my approach to writing code has always been to plan out a good architecture and then implement the framework first, knowing that any time spent building a decent infrastructure first can pay off enormously over the life of the project. But as part of my new policy of leaning into my distractible attention span, I’m embracing a more “rapid prototyping” workflow. Unfortunately, somebody forgot to inform my subconscious about the new plan.

Obsidian-fu

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Sun, 27 Apr 2025 21:52:45 +0000

Refactoring the shadowmaker has become a bigger headache than I had originally anticipated, but it’s for the long-term health of the system, so I’m sticking to my guns. This weekend added further drama when I finally stopped running away from frontmatter and embraced it for all my metadata. Sure, scattering #ch-command directives throughout the body of the notes was insane, but fixing it is going to mean more than just adding a few metadata fields. I may have to completely change the way I use Obsidian.

Ontology-2.0

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Sun, 20 Apr 2025 10:56:15 +0000

While trying to integrate the many episodes of CaveTV into the site, I realized that the ontology was getting cramped. It needs to be revised to better distinguish between internal projects, external brand identities, multiple deliverables within a brand, and distinct showrooms.

What follows is the scheme we devised for what the abstractions are, how they should be tagged in Obsidian, and how the files will be managed within Hugo.

Cutting The Monster Into Pieces

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Sun, 13 Apr 2025 16:52:45 +0000

Now that I’ve identified a useable hosting candidate, my final test of their service will be to roll out a full implementation of the websmith deployment scheme. But in contemplating how I’m going to do that, I’ve realized that I may not have broken the project into distinct repos properly. So I’m going to figure it out by explaining it to the rubber duck. (Meaning you. :-)

Dear Guests, I Am Your Host - Maybe

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 16:00:57 +0000

With most of the content and features now working, it’s time to choose a hosting partner. Given recent politics, I’m inclined to limit my search to Canadian providers, but I’m not willing to compromise on the few services and features I require. First on the list to explore was HostPapa.

In Praise of Project Hopping

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Wed, 09 Apr 2025 13:28:45 +0000

Squirrel! Over the last day or two, the spotlight of my attention has been distracted by something shiny - getting new content ready for the FrankenTongues project. It’s content to feed a feature I’ve been wanting for some time now, and today I’ve been reacquainting myself with Frankie’s code so that I’ll be able to do something useful with that content when it’s ready. In the process, I’ve noticed that my memory for details no longer has the stamina for juggling so many projects. I can’t remember how things are organized or why things were done the way I did them, even though it was only a month ago that I did it.

But surprisingly, I think this could be a good thing.

Countdown To Launch

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Tue, 01 Apr 2025 09:20:28 +0000

This pipeline has come a long way since I first started it a week or two ago, and I’ll continue changing things, even after launch, but there’s not quite enough ready yet to go live. What follows is a list of my remaining “must have before launch” features .

A Few Tricky Bits

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Sun, 30 Mar 2025 13:17:24 +0000

For the last week, I’ve been modifying the checklist rather than posting individual progress updates, but with that list narrowing now, its worth checking in and discussing the thornier bits that remain.

Gitified

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Sun, 30 Mar 2025 08:40:31 +0000

The first sign in my workflow that things are starting to come together on a project is when I start getting nervous that the next change I make will break it. After all, it can’t really be thought of as “coming together” if there’s nothing to break yet, right?

Banishing The Demon

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Sat, 29 Mar 2025 23:13:28 +0000

The more time I put into getting this new site ready, the more possibilities I see for turning it into my central (and only) communications portal. But could this be more? Could this finally be an end to the demon of my “telescoping effort” conundrum?

Updates vs Problem Logs

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Sat, 29 Mar 2025 23:08:09 +0000

The rules of engagement for the new Creativity Hacker site are still evolving, and today I’ve identified a use-case distinction that I haven’t got a specific solution for: status updates vs issue journaling.

The Note and Tag Pipeline

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Sat, 29 Mar 2025 09:59:59 +0000

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, this new site is being designed with a streamlined workflow that will let me manage it as a normal part of my existing note-keeping system, but what I haven’t done yet is explain how it works.

Cousin of the Skunk

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Sat, 29 Mar 2025 07:39:26 +0000

After trying a few different schemes for generating bag names, I’ve made some further decisions about how the system will work. Not as automated as I’d hoped, but not as manual as I’d feared…

Comment System

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Sat, 29 Mar 2025 03:17:49 +0000

Disqus was a disappointment. I last looked at it a couple of years ago, and found it to be serviceable then, but it seems to have taken a slide onto the slums of the web, and is now covered in ads and unresponsive web pages. Not the kind of image that makes me think they’ll value the privacy of my guests. But I’ve found a different solution…

Flaytime Again

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Sat, 29 Mar 2025 02:07:50 +0000

Trying to keep this one short. My current site theme looks good now, but it ignores most features in the base theme: lightbi. So now it’s time to go to lightbi school and see if I can figure out how to achieve my sketch in a more compliant way.

Observant followers will note that this is much simpler than the previously shared sketch. Mostly because I’ve decided to lean away from visual candy in favor of simplicity and efficiency.

Refactoring Shadows

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 22:40:12 +0000

Remember that time I said that setting up a git repo is one of the first signs of life in a coding project? Well one of the next signs is when you’ve learned enough about the tools you’re building to see that you’ve been doing it wrong…

Happy Skunk Lifts Dishwasher

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 21:55:29 +0000

This guy looks happy, and he should, because he’s the newly selected poster boy for the system that will generate new Maranginator game bags. Confused? Me too. Come on inside and let’s figure out what I’m talking about.

Collapsement Achieved

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 14:47:18 +0000

The navbar now implements a collapsing list of projects. It was just a matter of implementing a standard Bootstrap drop-down navmenu, but having never done it, took me a while to sort out. (Hint for those who follow: Be sure you’re reading the Bootstrap docs for the version of Bootstrap you’re actually using. :-)

Finding the Framework

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 14:20:03 +0000

As mentioned, I’m searching for a simpler way to manage my blog with minimal server-side requirements, easy posting workflow, and integration with both my phone and my usual note-talking infrastructure: Obsidian wiki. But lets get more specific.

Collapsing Menus

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 21:12:51 +0000

As I continue to explore the lightbi theme, I’m noticing that it doesn’t implement collapsing menus. You can define a hierarchical page structure in the config file (explicitly) but it doesn’t get displayed in an elegant, “click to reveal” kinda way. Worse, I need a mechanism that discovers the structure dynamically, not by hard coding in the config. But fortunately, I might have found a solution.

The Blessing (and Curse) of New Tools

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 19:04:15 +0000

When you invest time in any process, you quickly learn to appreciate the difference between a tool for the job and the right tool, and so far, Hugo is knocking it out of Right Tool Stadium, but there is a downside.

Autofeeds Without Clutter

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 16:39:29 +0000

I need to be able to create some projects, such as my daily Maranga challenge, that will get a new post every day, but I don’t want those auto-pages filling up my Obsidian notebook system. Here’s how I’m planning to manage that.

Tricky Shadow

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 12:28:06 +0000

Creating that Jeff-to-Nikola translator wasn’t too bad, but I did run into a headache trying to figure out how to structure my shadow files to conform to what Nikola is looking for. I read somewhere that Nikola could be told to search through the content directories recursively and that it happily consumed metadata in YAML format, so that’s what I set up.

Controlling Images

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 09:14:54 +0000

I’m trying to keep the web system simple. At the moment, I can write one of these updates in about 3 minutes. It’s a great way to summarize my progress and think through next steps, then push them out to the public stream for anyone who might be following along.

Refining The Skunk

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 03:02:56 +0000

In a previous post, I worked out the general process by which I’ll be creating the daily challenge bag names for Maranginator, but now I have to sketch out an implementation with specific tools, algorithms, and processes. Furthermore, the Maranga newsletter is just one of several content streams I’m envisioning, and I want this system to be able to handle all of them.

Attitude Update

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 01:40:43 +0000

I’ve been working lately on the system for showcasing completed projects and have been wrestling with the whole naming scheme conundrum. Today I made some key choices, and it affects more than just names. I’ve changed the way I think about products too.

New Landing Page

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 01:07:16 +0000

Today started with a bit of AI exploration looking at a bunch of layout concepts for the look of the new website’s landing page. Lots of weird and head-scratching proposals were made, but this one has some stickiness to it. I had been thinking that the featured article would be on the left, and the smaller “other” article boxes would be on the right, but now I’m digging this proposal, with the feature right in the middle of an expanded banner section.

Casting a Shadow

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Wed, 26 Mar 2025 23:35:49 +0000

Yesterday I took a step forward on this wiki-to-web journey and today I’m going to take a half step back. My initial impulse was to get Nikola to process the wiki and build a web site from a subset of its many pages, but the wiki is not a pretty picture — it’s a sprawling spaghetti mess that more closely resembles a pulsing, flashing Rorschach animation rendered by my short attention span.

Deployment Test

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Wed, 26 Mar 2025 19:53:11 +0000

The plan is to deploy this site to a robust HTML-only server, which will keep costs down and security high, since there won’t be any programmatic interfaces on the site itself that can be hacked. My deployment engine of choice is simple: I’ll be using git push. But before I sign up for a hosting account and start pushing my brains out the door on an automated basis, I wanted to test that procedure on a smaller scale, here in the lab.

RSS Switchboard

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Wed, 26 Mar 2025 19:27:30 +0000

I’ve mentioned that this will be my primary (and possibly only) presence on the web. But if it’s going to support all the different things I want to do, it’ll have to be pretty powerful. After implementing a basic “everything” feed, I sat down and sketched out what a more nuanced system might look like.

Retirement Planning

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Wed, 26 Mar 2025 19:13:48 +0000

So far, the emphasis has been on managing active projects, but what happens with a project when its active development phase is over? It either goes on stage, or into a box.

Changing Horses

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Wed, 26 Mar 2025 17:51:59 +0000

After spending half a day diving deeper into Nikola’s theme engine and the archive of available themes, I’ve had second thoughts about hitching my cart to the Nikola pony. It’s perfectly functional, but to get anything close to the layout I’m aiming for, I would have to build an awful lot of the front end myself. For both the desktop and mobile contexts. And if I’m being honest, I don’t have much interest in that particular adventure. I’d rather adapt something that’s already close. So here I go, back into the static site generator dating market.

Some Horses Are Unridable

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Wed, 26 Mar 2025 14:22:56 +0000

The whole point of Web UI themes, IMO, is to save the casual user from having to write their own. And after spending the afternoon customizing the Lightbi theme, I’ve realized that it’s nice, but not close enough. Yes, I could get it to work, but I don’t want to work that hard - not on web skinning - so I went shopping for a new horse. Again…

About and Gallery

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Wed, 26 Mar 2025 12:55:20 +0000

A couple of powerful features added today that will eventually let me do some cool stuff, but none of those actual cool things added yet.